How I repaired my television marriage (or how I stopped worrying and learned to love The Office again)

Julia Hass is back Guest-clacking for us again, this time with a five-part series! Enjoy!

There are times, I have heard, in which every marriage gets strained; it’s not that the love isn’t there, it’s just that it’s hibernating a bit. Maybe it’s because one of you stopped shaving or the other one keeps forgetting to take out the trash. Maybe it’s kids or work or school or stress. But all marriages, as far as I can glean from having never been in one, go through brief cooling periods where you wonder why, exactly, you have married this person, where you start to mourn for your single days before looking around sadly at the other options and realizing that, for better or for worse, there’s no one you’d rather leg-shackle yourself to that the schmuck you’ve already chosen.

I’d been feeling that way about The Office lately. Our love started out so passionate and strong. We made each other laugh and cry, it comforted me in times of sorrow, and we stuck together come hell, high water, writer’s strikes, and the season of Jim Halpert’s poorly thought-out wig to cover up his shorter hair. But the passion had dimmed. Maybe it was because I was feeling down in the dumps myself, or maybe it was that The Office wasn’t supporting me in my time of need, but whatever the reason was, I started looking around.

There were a few shows that tempted me. 30 Rock, for example, nearly seduced me away into a torrid affair, but that was cut off abruptly by the appearance of Selma Hayek and her sudden and baffling inability to act (how is it that she was great on Ugly Betty, but when she comes on 30 Rock she’s like a humor vortex, where jokes circle around before falling over and dying pathetically? Is this what happens to people when they pop out offspring?).

Psych has never quite given up on wooing me, even though I’ve told it time and time again we’re just friends. It’s been throwing me bones of delightful Shawn and Gus shenanigans while Lassiter tag-teams for triple the fun but, per usual, its various attempts at artificially inserting Shawn and Juliet as a couple and too many incomprehensible ’80s references have left me in the dust.

The strongest contender may have been Bones, though I was reluctant to let my heart truly go to a show that wasn’t a sitcom, especially when it aired on Fox (or, as I like to call it, The Network That Destroys Dreams). Decomposing flesh, however, was the deciding factor. Even when it’s fake, my inability to watch it without vomiting killed our budding relationship, and fast. (Get what I did there? It killed our relationship? Because I was talking about Bones? Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all night.) I was feeling pretty despondent — about my life, my television marriage, the fate of TV in general — until last Thursday night.

Last Thursday night, The Office did the equivalent of cooking me dinner, giving me a back massage, and buying me a puppy. I had been making a mental list of all the things I missed about our love when it was young and beautiful, and it was as if The Office found the list and went about trying to make sure every single one of those got addressed.

My First Concern: Missing Mindy
Anyone who knows me even the tiniest bit knows that I have a love for Mindy Kaling that borders on abject worship. I religiously read her blog, watch every video of her I can find on YouTube, and use her as a consideration while shopping; if it’s not something Mindy would think was cute, well, that’s a problem.

Reading Mindy’s writing credits is like reading a laundry list of my favorite Office episodes (“The Dundies”, “The Injury”, “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”, and my personal favorite of hers, “Ben Franklin”). This season, however, had been suspiciously Mindy-free, and I was beginning to not only feel lost without her writing (that’s right, I can tell when certain writers have written certain episodes, because I’m just that cool), I was also feeling lost without her on-screen persona, Kelly.

The thing I love about Kelly is that she does all the things I wish I could do, or would do if I didn’t have those pesky traits like self-respect. Kelly likes the pop culture phenomena we all like and pretend not to, Kelly rants and babbles in the way we wish we could if only there were someone who wouldn’t mind listening to us, only Kelly doesn’t care that no one wants to listen to her. And last Thursday Kelly did what I, as a twin born eight days before Christmas, have always wanted to do — throw a tantrum until everyone remembered my birthday. Will I ever do that in a million years? No. But that’s why I need Kelly Kapoor on my screen as often as possible – to do these things for me.

Check back tomorrow for part two….

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Feb 11, 2009 @ 17:00 EST5EDT